Luxon readies to hammer out a deal

ANALYSIS: Faced with forging a coalition of “last resort”, Christopher Luxon will hit the phones today in pursuit of a deal with David Seymour and Winston Peters to form a Government.

In doing so, he will face two men with similar incentives, but very different personalities. One, the thrice-risen wizened operator of an economic nationalist party who is almost twice the age of the other, a policy nerd who has resurrected his small libertarian party from the dead.

Both will need enough ministerial jobs and enough policy wins to try to set them up for a 2026 re-election. Minor parties in Government have rarely fared well under MMP.

A final count of votes from the 2023 election, published yesterday afternoon, confirmed what the National Party was hoping to avoid in the panicked final weeks of the campaign: NZ First will be needed to form the centre-right Government voted in by New Zealanders three weeks ago.

Though Luxon struck a positive tone yesterday, insisting good progress had been made in meetings since election night, he could give no timeline for forming a Government and the challenges he faces were readily apparent. Seymour confirmed his party has tried repeatedly to speak with NZ First – but there was no response.

However, Luxon comes to the negotiation as a political neophyte and carries no political baggage with Peters. Both men can be practical and transactional.

Peters has not responded to The Post’s repeated requests for comment. But in an interview with online radio station The Platform he said: “We can’t all get what we want”.

"There's a lot of things we do agree on. Then, let's also be open to the fact that there's information that none of us have got and we need to have it as fast as possible ... in a matter of days, maybe,” Peters said, in a possible reference to NZ First’s desire to see the workings behind National’s tax plan.

Peters also appeared eager to diminish Seymour, if in a trivial way. Luxon confirmed he spoke to both Seymour and Peters after the election result was published, but would not confirm in which order. Peters said he spoke to Luxon at “two minutes past two”, moments after the numbers were public.

Seymour – despite an at times venomous history with Peters – was more conciliatory. He said the voters had asked for the three parties to work together, so he could sit at the

Cabinet table with NZ First. “We would anticipate that we will sit down with all three parties, I expect at some point next week.”

Luxon, asked to detail his approach for the coming meetings, retreated to his most comfortable mode of communication: management-speak.

“Again, we need to elevate up and say, ‘Well, what are the big rocks and the additive things that actually the other parties are bringing to our agenda? What are the things we’ve got variance in’, and discuss and work our way through.

“It’s been done in good faith, good will, I have been really impressed from my position, working with both those leaders and their teams.”

Luxon and Peters are understood to have supped in an upstairs private dining room at Wellington’s Boulcott St Bistro on Wednesday, when Peters was in town to spend time

with his new MPs and Luxon was in for briefings.

Meanwhile, Peters’ phone has been off the hook for Seymour who has tried at least four times to make contact with NZ First through various channels.

It is understood that Peters is firming as a possibility to once again be foreign minister. He would be the obvious choice, is well regarded in the region and most experienced person for the job.

Gerry Brownlee, National’s current foreign affairs spokesperson is understood to be being lined up as a potential Speaker of the House, despite not being particularly keen on it.

For National the task is to get as many of its top performers into key jobs, while giving up a limited number of roles to get a deal made, or where NZ First and ACT have good people who could burnish the Cabinet table with know-how or experience.

NZ First is understood to also want some key portfolios in the areas such as regional development and energy. Both to try to direct resources in the regions and also to begin to dismantle what they see as the excesses of Labour’s various climate change policies. Any job in these areas has Shane Jones written all over it.

And NZ First will be knocking on an open door. National and ACT both believe that the emissions trading scheme is the best way to drive down emissions and that most other climate subsidies are little more than feelgood handouts.

The ACT Party appears to be approaching these talks with a moneyball type strategy – essentially a strategy to identify underpriced ministries and ministerial jobs which could have political upside not before considered.

These could perhaps be in areas which previously attracted second tier ministers. On this logic, governing well in these areas would then pay political dividends for ACT.

So for ACT, this is in areas such as its proposed Ministry for Regulation aimed at reducing red tape. ACT will also be looking to have some influence in the finance area, though not as minister, some roles in education, crime and justice, treaty issues and potentially Oranga Tamariki.

Where there could be some tension is over who ends up being commerce minister. Both ACT and NZ First are keen to get their hands on the traditional second-tier ministerial job (or even lower ranked, Labour’s Duncan Webb wasn’t even in Cabinet) for different reasons.

ACT wants to get purer competition and barriers to entry removed in a lot of areas, whereas NZ First is very keen to crack into “a full scale pricing and monopoly investigation” into what Peters has called “the Ned Kelly” Australian-owned banks, supermarkets, and electricity “gen-tailers”.

Both parties are acutely aware of the political advantage of being seen to be on the side of the poor ripped off consumers, especially during a cost of living crunch.

There could similarly be competition for roles which have influence on Treaty issues. Both ACT and NZ First campaigned on ending Labour’s co-governance efforts; ACT has also been pushing for a referendum on the Treaty. Both will want influence, but will also be wary of becoming bogged down in a fraught issue.

Luxon’s challenge is to navigate these waters to achieve – as he said 15 times yesterday – strong and stable government.

“It’s been done in good faith ... I have been really impressed, from my position, working with both those leaders and their teams.”

National leader Christopher Luxon, on coalition talks

He was a little boy with the startling but unofficial name we shouldn’t even know. But since Ruthless-Empire Souljah Reign Rhind Ahipene-Wall was taken lifeless to Hutt Hospital nearly three weeks ago, just days before his second birthday, what we do know is his end would have been like too many other children who have died in this country – brutal. He had suffered blunt force trauma to his head and was found with various injuries and bruises.

As police continue their homicide inquiry, scrutiny is being focused on the inhabitants of the Taita, Lower Hutt, house in which Baby Ru died, including his mother, Storm Angel Wall, and extended whānau members.

But if they are being investigated, so too must the government agencies who were made aware of myriad issues, yet did seemingly nothing.

Not the Department of Corrections, which has refused to answer questions about whether it was monitoring the Poole St house after it was revealed that a person connected to the house was facing charges including aggravated assault, common assault, wilful damage, threatening behaviour and shoplifting as well as breaching intensive supervision conditions.

Not Kainga Ora, who the neighbour had called around 30 times to complain and had his fence smashed and rubbish, food scraps and dog poo thrown onto his property in return.

Not the police who that same neighbour had called about 15 times.

And not Oranga Tamariki, the Ministry of Children. When police announced that as part of their investigation, they were working actively with the ministry, it refused to comment, citing the investigation and privacy as reasons.

Then last Tuesday the curtains of obfuscation parted, and chief executive Chappie Te Kani revealed that while Ru hadn’t been in their custody or care when he died, an ID number in the case management system had been allocated to the child.

Such numbers are recorded whenever Oranga Tamariki receives a report of concern.

The author of one such report was then revealed to be Ru’s uncle, Ngatanahira Reremoana, who had cared for Ru for half of his life. He told reporters he was so worried about the baby being in and out of drug houses that on December 26 last year he sent Oranga Tamariki an email titled “Child in Danger”. He listed the disgusting conditions the child was living in, alleged there were drugs in the home, and asked for Ru to be uplifted. The ministry responded on January 10 but didn’t intervene.

It seems unbelievable that this organisation is charged with caring for some of the country’s most vulnerable children and doesn’t even keep up to date records of how many are dying because of abuse or neglect.

It took an anonymous leak to Stuff – an internal ministry document stuffed into a white envelope – to divulge the truth. At least 57 children have been killed since Oranga Tamariki was created seven years ago.

What’s more, half of them had a record with the agency, as Baby Ru did, before they died. As Jane Searle, chief executive of child advocacy group Child Matters says, those children had been red flagged. “If Oranga Tamariki already knew about them, why did the system not respond to protect them?” Why indeed.

While the detail of the number of child homicides is understood to have been shared with Oranga Tamariki’s partner agencies, including police and justice officials, it was apparently too much of an inconvenient truth to share with the public.

Thus, the data gap becomes a knowledge gap that begets a public transparency gap and Baby Ru becomes just another statistic – another of the children who die every five weeks in Aotearoa due to family violence.

Here’s another uncomfortable fact: New Zealand has the seventh highest rate of child homicide in the OECD.

If that figure is alarming, then consider this. Public reaction to this roll-call of shame has followed a depressingly similar pattern over the years. We’ve slid from shedding tears of regret, marching in protest, pledging to always remember them, to a dumbfounded disconnect.

We may sneer at the madness of another US school shooting as “thoughts and prayers” platitudes roll off their politicians’ tongues, but we’re no better when it comes to our kids being murdered in their homes.

We need accountability, not only from the next Minister for Children but from Oranga Tamariki. Because Jane Searle from Child Matters is right. The time for reviews and rebrands is gone.

Oranga Tamariki needs to upskill its workforce, provide an early intervention programme, and ensure that staff are provided with child protection training that’s mandatory, not voluntary as it is now.

Too many children have been dying for too long. By doing nothing now, we’re simply perpetuating the cycle. We must replace the detachment with acknowledgement and answers.

If we don’t then our reputation for being a country that’s a great place to bring up kids will be succeeded by another – a